We are surrounded by heroes. Yesterday I discovered one at the local espresso stand. Or… I guess he discovered me, really. I had just ordered a mocha, and was waiting at the window to conclude the transaction, when I heard someone say in a gentle voice behind me, “I don’t want to embarrass you, but you have a tag on your pants.” I turned around and saw this young man smiling at me, sort of apologetically. “You have a… ” – he stretched his fingertips out from each other vertically – “…a tag on your pants.”
When he stretched his fingertips out from each other length-wise, I knew he meant I had one of those long plastic strips on my jeans that tells what size they are – I had just bought those jeans the day before and hadn’t realized the plastic strip thingy was still affixed to them. This was embarrassing in so many ways – one of the chief ones being that my jeans size is not something you would ever hear me bragging about, if you know what I mean – and I certainly wouldn’t knowingly walk around with it affixed to my pants for everyone to see.
I started laughing and peeled off the strip. “Thank you!” I said, holding out my hand to shake his hand. And then I discovered that he knew how to shake hands the proper way! – shake, roll the thumbs over, bump fists, and end with a retreating finger-wiggle. He was surprised that I knew how to do this and, by way of explanation, I told him I teach at an alternative high school, so… yeah… “And that’s all the more reason to thank you for telling me about the plastic strip on my pants! Can you imagine how that would have gone over at the high school?!” He and I both laughed together then at the image that conjured up for us.
The barista made a joke about me wanting to leave the plastic strip on my pants to show off that I had new jeans. I pointed out that the plastic strip gave the size of my jeans which is not something I’d really like to advertise to the general public, and she and my hero chuckled about that. “But we’ll just keep my jeans size between ourselves, right?” I asked my new friend. He nodded in the affirmative, and assured me he would never tell – my secret was safe with him.
By this time my mocha was ready and my bill paid. My hero and I introduced ourselves, and I learned his name was Pablo. I asked him if I could take his picture and write about his noble and heroic self in my blog, and he good-naturedly agreed.
I’d almost made it back inside my car, when Pablo yelled to me, “You forgot your debit card! Oh! And you forgot your backpack!”
Sheesh.
“Thanks for taking care of me this morning, Pablo!” I said, grabbing my card and pack. And he smiled his hero’s smile and wished me a good day.
“Wouldn’t the world be happier, friends, if in our dealings with one another we could always truthfully say that whatever we thought or said or did expressed the nature of God as divine Love? …This may sound like an impossible goal. But it really isn’t. When we understand how to listen for divine Love’s guidance, there’s no need to be thrown off base by what our neighbor does or doesn’t do. Of course we’re all familiar with the temptations that would upset good relations… a dog or too loud radio keeps someone awake half the night; someone decides a neighbor isn’t good enough, has the wrong kind of name, or perhaps one envies the good thing his neighbor has…But whatever the temptation, we can refuse to be impulsive or spiteful, self-righteous or jealous. Through the understanding of divine Love each of us can learn to be a good neighbor. And a good neighbor doesn’t gossip, criticize, or even wish that he or the folks next door could move away. “
– The Christian Science Sentinel, December 4, 1954
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a good neighbor. So when I stumbled, all unexpectedly, on the article “The Remedy for Neighborhood Tensions” from an old 1954 Christian Science Sentinel, I felt the train of my thoughts come skidding to a halt as I stopped to ponder the ideas the article had to offer me.
As I’ve reflected on “neighborliness” I’ve come to understand that being a good neighbor doesn’t mean we have to “take sides” in neighborhood disputes. I don’t have to hate one neighbor to show love to another. I don’t have to criticize one neighbor, to show friendship to another. I don’t have to gossip about one neighbor, to show support for another. I don’t have to get angry or fired up or militant to take a firm stand for what is right and decent.
Being a good neighbor comes down to this one thing: I simply need to love – without exclusion or discrimination or judgment or condemnation. That’s my whole job, right there. To love. I need to see my neighbor as God sees my neighbor – as God’s dear child – beautiful and good and whole and happy. If I can see my neighbor through the eyes of God, Love, then I won’t be threatened or annoyed or irritated or frightened by him – I’ll enter into dialogue with him expecting to find solutions to conflict, and answers to problems.
Jesus told us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. I’m thinking that means that what we want for ourselves, we should want for our neighbors, too. If I want to be trusted, then I need to be willing to trust. If I want to be treated with consideration, than I need to be considerate. If I want to be shown kindness, then I need to show kindness.
It has been a challenging month. There has been death, a need to help loved ones make a major transition in their lives, the end of a school year (my fellow teachers will understand what that means), and car troubles. And there have been times when I wondered how in the heck I was going to get from here to there – both figuratively and literally.
But every challenge has come with a blessing:
celebrating Mike
flowers from the Humoristian hooligans
Princess
– You may remember that several weeks ago I wrote about an adventure I had with my car – the alternator gave out on me in downtown Bellingham – and that adventure led me to meeting some really nice people and finding a paper clip at the end, too. But after the alternator adventure my car continued to make squeeks and squawks and screeches, and so last Monday I took it in to have it checked. I do not have the mechanical language to tell you exactly what they diagnosed, but it involved a ball bearing in the clutch, some leaking fluid, and something to do with the thing that’s attached to the muffler. Yup. My car has been in the car hospital all week.
car repair
My husband has been shuttling me into work in the mornings, and my sons have been shuttling me back home again in the afternoons. These daily commutes have brought unforeseen blessings to me. I’ve been used to sitting in my own thoughts to and from work – and I’ve always kind of enjoyed that quiet alone time – but I’ve found a lot of joy in being able to hold conversations with my husband and sons while they are trapped… I mean… sitting… in their cars with me. I’ve had twenty minutes with my husband that I don’t usually have during the day – we’ve gotten caught up on what’s going on with family, friends, his work and mine. We’ve talked about politics, world news, and community happenings. We’ve laughed, and we’ve been serious, and we’ve ended every commute with a kiss. My sons and I have had the opportunity to talk about past, present, and future. They’ve shared their wisdom with me, and their insights on life, and they’ve shared their humor. I’ve learned a lot from them this week.
– One afternoon I found myself stalled-out on an Algebra problem I was working on with one of my students. It was actually a pretty simple problem – using long division to solve a quadratic equation – but the math compartment in my brain just seemed to shut down all of a sudden. And then I remembered that my eldest son – the mechanical engineer – was going to be picking me up at the end of the day, so I gave him a call and asked him if he could come in a little early and help Carlos and I work through this algebra problem. The son agreed to come in and help us, and he was wonderful! He was calm, he was patient – he knew exactly what to do to get through the problem, and he knew exactly what to say to help Carlos understand how to get through the problem. A blessing.
– At the end of February my beloved calico cat, Freckle Rose, died. I have felt the loss of Freckle Rose terribly. But out of this loss has come another blessing. My parents are in the process of moving out of their home of 48 years into a home more suitable to their current needs. My parents have five cats, and knew they were going to need to find homes for at least a couple of them. Mom asked me if I’d take their cat, Gabby. So I brought the cat carrier down to my folks to pick up Gabby-cat. But as soon as Gabby saw the carrier she headed for the farthest corners of the house – she wanted nothing to do with that thing. Enter Princess. Princess is a fluffy little ball of ebony fur who adopted my parents about four years ago. Princess looked at the carrier, looked up at me, looked back at the carrier, and calmly and deliberately walked right into it! She was meant to be with us. When we brought her back to our house she was a little shy – but as soon as I sat down on the sofa and opened up my laptop – BOOM! – Princess was there – walking over the keys, rubbing up against my arms – what is it with cats and laptops? 🙂 Princess has brought feline ambiance back into our home. Our home really needed some feline ambiance.
Princess
– Our neighbor and dear friend, Mike, passed away this week. Mike and his family are some of the most wonderful people you’ll ever meet – kind, funny, quirky, genuinely caring people – all of them were a huge support when I went through a personal crisis a few years ago. Before Mike passed on, his family and friends organized a sky lantern extravaganza in celebration of Mike’s amazing life. Apparently Mike had bought, like, a gazillion sky lanterns some time ago – never realizing, his wife said, that they’d be used to celebrate HIS life. And so we all met – friends, family, neighbors – in a green field in Bow to send our lanterns of love into the sky for Mike. Mike arrived just before the lanterns alighted and was able to watch the magic from the comfort of a car. It was good to see him there. Being able to celebrate Mike WITH Mike – instead of after him – was a huge blessing – a magical, teary, amazing time. I’m so glad I could be part of that.
celebrating Mike
– The end of a school year can be a really stressful time for teachers and students as they try to wrap up the year. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming – there are state assessments for students to pass, courses for them to complete, and graduation busy-ness. But there have also been a lot of blessings this year. This week one of my seniors presented her Culminating Project PowerPoint to the staff – and she did a most excellent job of it, too. At the end of it, the director of our school asked my student what the best part of her time at our alternative school has been for her. My student answered, “My teacher. Karen believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.” Oh gosh. I started tearing up. That – right there – that is why I teach. Blessings.
– One of my sons let me use his car to get to the testimony meeting that I needed to conduct on Wednesday. As soon as I started the car I realized I was going to need to get some gas for my son – the tank was almost empty. Normally the getting-of-gas would not be a big deal to me. But by Wednesday I was feeling totally over-the-top mentally and emotionally stretched – I felt like those street performers who spin plates on their noses and toes whilst juggling fiery torches – adding even one more teensy thing to my juggling torches and twirling plates made me wonder if I had the mental wherewithal to keep it all from crashing around me. But I took a deep breath – asked myself how hard it could be – and decided it would be best if I stopped on the way to the meeting to get gas, rather than afterwards.
I tried to remember which side of the car the gas tank was on – and I guessed my side – and I remembered that you couldn’t just open the flap to the gas tank – there was some super-secret something I had to do – I figured when the time came I would figure it all out. My son drives an automatic and I am used to driving a stickshift – so there was that – my left foot kept searching for the clutch. It was raining – where were the windshield wipers? And whoah! How did you slow them down?! And it was getting dark – where were the lights? I got all that sorted out before I reached the gas station – I started to pull into a gas lane just as the attendant put a cone down to block it off – I tried to pull around and ended up in reverse somehow – but there was no one behind me – blessings. I finally got myself pulled next to a gas pump – and found I’d been right about which side of the car it was on. And when I opened the door to get out of the car I looked down and discovered a little lever that would open the car’s gas tank – blessings. I know this all seems like simple stuff – but it’s amazing how each little thing can seem like an almost-insurmountable mountain at times – and it’s amazing how grateful a person can be when it all works out.
– Yesterday I came home from school to find a bouquet of yellow lilies and little pink roses waiting for me on the counter. There was a card attached. I had no idea who could have sent me this beautiful bouquet – Mother’s Day was LAST weekend, right? I opened the card. These words greeted me: “From your wily Amazonian Humoristian hooligans. We love you.”
flowers from the Humoristian hooligans
You’ll need a little background to understand what that bouquet meant to me: Eight years ago, on an Amazon religion discussion forum, I started a new religion – Humoristianity. The people who were attracted to the Humoristian “temple” represented a wide range of religious and non-religious backgrounds – there were atheists, Methodists, Jews, Catholics, a couple Mormons, and at least one Christian Scientist (moi). But what they all had in common was the ability to laugh at themselves, and to laugh with me at the nonsense of life. This little community of friends has been with me through the good times and the challenging times. I’ve been blest to meet half a dozen of them in the person – and continue to be friends with many of them on Facebook. They are like a second family to me. And apparently one of them had discerned that I needed flowers. It was totally unexpected – a complete surprise – I never could have seen it coming – but I am so grateful for the love these dear people showed to me with that lovely bouquet.
I am blest – I really am. I’m blest with the physical stuff – the roof over my head, the food on the table, the water coming out of our pipes. But more – so much more than that – I am blest with love – the love of a new cat in our lives, the love of my family, the love expressed in my community for a dear neighbor, the love from my students, and the love from my Humoristian fellowship. There is power in Love – the power to lift up a burdened heart, and to help our fellow humans see that they matter.
Dear reader, may your moments and days and years be filled to over-flowing with Love.
I brought out the old address book this weekend to work on my Christmas cards. I’ve had that book about 30 years – I can no longer remember exactly where I got it or when – but when I first started writing names and addresses in it I’m sure I didn’t realize how significant it would one day become to me. It has become a chronicle of sorts – a record of friendships and family ties.
My mom was the youngest of ten children and my dad the middle of three – at one time I had 11 aunts and uncles – and their names and addresses are still in my address book, though they are all gone now – Mom and Dad are the only ones remaining in their generation. As I l started flipping through my address book, this was brought home to me. “I don’t have any more aunts or uncles to send Christmas cards to,” I told my husband, sort of in shock. My cousins, Julie and Skip and Chris, are gone now, too. And Craig and Mark. And I’ve lost friends through the years – Kim has passed, other friends have moved away and on, and I’ve lost my connection to them.
For a moment I was overwhelmed by sadness as I realized how many dear ones are no longer walking this earth with me.
But then, as I started working my way towards the back of each alphabetized section, I started finding more recent names and addresses – a record of new friendships and a younger generation of family members with their own homes. There was something about that discovery that lifted the sadness from me a little. Yes, I’ve lost loved ones through the years, but I’ve also gained new friends and new family. In the last ten years I’ve added the names of new friends living all over the world – people I’ve met through the internet or through my books – addresses for new friends in Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, Ontario, Nova Scotia, England, Kenya – people I never could have imagined knowing when I first got my address book all those years ago.
Although the book is pretty full now, I am happy to note there is still room for more addresses, more friendships. There will always be room in my address book. If I have to, I’ll just tape in more pages. It’s cool to think of all the new names and addresses my address book might hold in the future.
A really cool thing happened today. When I woke up this morning I woke up with a mission pinging around inside my noggin – and it was a really fine mission, too. It came to me that I was supposed to get a Starbucks gift card for a teaching friend who had just passed the National Boards, and another for a teaching friend who was in the process of moving. The “how” I was going to get these cards to them, and the “when” I was going to find time to get to a Starbucks I was not sure about, but…. details, details, right? I knew it would all work out somehow.
I hadn’t planned it, but I found I was running 15 minutes early this morning, so when I hit the freeway it occurred to me that I’d have time to stop by a Starbucks before work. I remembered, then, a Starbucks that sat off the freeway on a parallel road. Hah! I decided to give myself a little adventure before work – I’d stop off at the Starbucks, buy the gift cards, and buy myself one of those Starbucks holiday drinks, and then I’d take the parallel road for a while instead of getting back on the freeway and taking my usual route to work. I’d shake things up a little. 🙂 I’d worry about how I’d get the cards to my friends (who work at different schools) later.
And then the really cool thing happened: When I got to the Starbucks I saw another teaching friend coming out of it – someone I really enjoy and hadn’t seen for a long time – and as she smiled and raised her hand to wave at me, it occurred to me that she worked at the same school as the teacher who’s in the process of moving! I could give the card to her to give to my other friend!
Michele and I hugged and when I told her about my plan, she was ready and eager to help me get the card to our other friend. She came back into the Starbucks with me and we had a few minutes to chat and laugh and hug again and get caught up a little before we both headed off to our respective schools.
And THAT had all gone so well that I felt inspired to continue my morning adventure and make an effort to get the second Starbucks gift card to its proper place. The friend who had passed the National Boards teaches at a school along the road that runs parallel to the freeway – I could, I decided, simply take that road as far as her school and drop it off on my way to my own school. Which is exactly what I did. And when I stopped at that school I ran into ANOTHER friend – a young woman who had once worked side-by-side with me during a year that had challenged both of us as teachers. Teresa has one of those smiles that can light up a room and as soon as I saw her I felt the positive energy just radiating from her. We hugged and laughed and reminded each other how much we had appreciated each other’s support during our challenging year. Then, because I realized I was now running late, I gave her another quick hug and continued on to school.
Which brings me to the final really cool thing: I wasn’t late! I arrived at school just as my first student arrived – perfect!
At some point last spring I got into my pictures file on my laptop and searched for “tulips”. A lovely picture of a yellow tulip with a perfect red stripe down its middle came up amongst all my other tulip photos. I wondered how I could have missed this one before. I titled it “Tulip with Red Stripe”, worked with it a little bit to bring out the colors, and posted it on fineartamerica.com. Yeah. So… yesterday I was walking by a colleague’s desk and the red-striped tulip picture came up on her screen saver. How, I wondered, did my photo end up on her screen saver? I searched around on my computer and found a file of sample pictures provided by microsoft – and the tulip picture was in there! After a little investigating I discovered the photo was actually taken by a photographer named David Nadalin. I know – yikes, right? I immediately took the picture off my fineartamerica.com page, and then found David’s phone number and email address, and left him messages explaining what I’d done with his photo, and how I was trying to rectify my boo boo.
After I left my messages for David I went into my Facebook account – both the author/photographer page and my personal page – to see if I’d posted the photo there, too – and, sure enough, I had. Feeling the need to set things straight there I posted David’s tulip picture on both pages, along with an explanation of the mistake I’d made.
In the meantime, David had graciously replied to my email message, and I was relieved to discover that 1) he is a good sport and 2) he has a well-developed sense of humor. He wrote, in part, “That photo of mine is in every copy of Windows 7. So anyone running that would figure out pretty quickly where it came from. 750 million people have a copy of that one already…” SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION PEOPLE!!! That sort of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? Yup. When I mess up, it is on a grand scale. No small little insignificant mess-ups for me. Nosiree, bub. I mess-up BIG.
So back to Facebook. I found David Nadalin’s page and sent out a friend request to him – after reading his email response it was obvious, to me, that he’d fit right in with my way cool and kind of eclectic community of FB friends – and he accepted my request! – and then his wife (whom I’ve discovered is a wonderful photographer in her own right) came onto my page, too, and – long story, short – David and his wife, Carol, are now both my Facebook friends!
Having the opportunity to laugh with my new friends, David and Carol, and my old friends, too (who, I’m pretty sure, are not at all surprised by anything I do at this point) about my 750-million-people-goof ended up being the highlight of my day. I love when stuff like that happens. 🙂
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 